CNET Editors' Rating

The Bottom LineThis is certainly Sony's most impressive player yet. With a little more attention to detail and some more work on the much improved bundled software, Sony may yet have a chance in this market

7.5 Overall

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Sony has suffered hardest of all in the MP3 player wars. Though the
company's Walkman ruled the 80s when it almost single-handedly
established a market for portable music players, it has lagged in
recent years. Conflicts of interest between Sony's music publishing and
consumer electronics businesses have meant that while Sony's product
designers may long for a more open approach to portable music, Sony
Music is still utterly paranoid that online music will bring about its
death.

So, what is Sony to do when it glowers at the success of the
iPod but doesn't want to make copying music too easy? Its initial
reaction was to bundle SonicStage with all its Network Walkmans. This
was a crude, irredeemably clunky bit of software that made transferring
software to Sony MP3 players extremely frustrating. This gave Apple
plenty of time to develop iTunes and its relatively straightforward
approach to managing MP3s.

With the launch of the Walkman NW-A1000, Sony has revamped the
SonicStage software -- or perhaps more accurately, replaced it with the
Connect Player. This bears more than a passing resemblance to Apple's
iTunes, sharing its wirebrushed finish, panel layouts and... well,
everything really. Save for the omission of the Apple logo, Sony has
co-opted the iTunes interface wholesale. It clearly works, so why not?
Initially this appears to be a vast improvement over SonicStage.

The NW-A1000 itself is gorgeous-looking and makes a very definite
fashion statement. Where the iPod's impact has been eroded slightly
because of the ubiquity of those little white ear buds, the NW-A1000
feels fresh and unique. So, with the new connection software, are the
reasons not to buy Sony slowly evaporating?

DesignSony has been surprisingly inventive with its
choice of design for the NW-A1000. While its Connect software now
mimics iTunes, the design of the player couldn't be more unique. The
player has a lozenge-like appearance and is reminiscent of tightly
wrapped, glistening sweets.

The front panel is of the semi-translucent type used most memorably in the NW-E507.
This is designed to give the impression that the text displayed on the
NW-A1000's LCD is magically appearing on the player's outer plastic
shell. Unfortunately, the outer plastic shell on the NW-A1000 is too
translucent and you can actually see the LCD beneath the surface. This
spoils the trick slightly -- the NW-E507 pulled it off
much more effectively, presumably by using a different paint technique.

The rear of the player also appears to be plastic, but between the
two halves of the chassis there's a strong metal collar which wraps
around all edges to protect it on impact. We didn't drop the NW-A1000,
but it looks like it could probably take a fairly severe knock, so long
as this is delivered to the edge of the unit.

The front of the player includes simple navigation controls which
allow you to skip through songs, change basic options and retreat
through menus using the Back button. Sony has made a mistake including
so many different buttons on the front of the player, some features
could have been amalgamated into the main transport control. None the
less, the interface is instantly intuitive and no one we handed the
player to was unable to get music playing.

On the right-hand side of the player, a slider increases and
decreases volume, and on the left there's a button to invoke 'Artist
Link', which is a rarely used feature probably undeserving of a whole
button to itself. The lower side of the player houses a proprietary USB
cable connector and the top side includes a headphone socket and Hold
button.